The law would give the interior minister the authority to select how many employers foreign workers in the caretaking field can work for.

Over 200 top Israeli academics signed a petition released on Thursday calling on
the government to cancel a bill that would bind foreign workers to their
employers.

The law, which passed its first reading during the past
Knesset session, would give the interior minister the authority to select how
many employers foreign workers in the caretaking field can work for, and which
geographic areas they are allowed to work in. It would also allow the Interior
Ministry to determine which specific fields of caretaking individual workers can
work in.

The petition, which was sponsored by the Association for Civil
Rights in Israel, says that if put into law, the bill would have the effect of
“making it so that migrants working as caretakers will not be able to freely
change employers and that those who quit their work without authorization will
be subject to arrest and deportation.”

The petition continues: “Shackling
foreign workers to their employers, exploiting their economic distress and
increasing the infringements on their labor rights is not an alternative to
finding agreed-upon social policies to treat senior citizens and people with
disabilities in need of assistance.”

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